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The John Batchelor Show

HEADLINE: Obamacare Subsidies Trigger Government Shutdown Debate GUEST NAME: Michael Toth SUMMARY: Michael Toth explains that the current government shutdown debate centers on extending two expensive Biden-era Obamacare subsidies. These changes allow indi

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Society & Culture, Books, Arts

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

HEADLINE: Obamacare Subsidies Trigger Government Shutdown Debate GUEST NAME: Michael Toth SUMMARY: Michael Toth explains that the current government shutdown debate centers on extending two expensive Biden-era Obamacare subsidies. These changes allow individuals earning over 400% of the federal poverty line to receive subsidies and provide 100% coverage for the near-poor. The original Obamacare cross-subsidy structure failed because young, healthy individuals found premiums too high. Toth advocates deregulation, such as allowing insurance companies to charge lower, risk-adjusted rates and enabling single business owners to use Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) for cheaper coverage.



Transcript

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0:00.0

Building a coffee business?

0:01.9

Serving the best Americano in town is up to you.

0:04.1

But winning back time and growing your business, leave that to sum up.

0:07.1

Take orders and payments anywhere with the new SumUp Terminal.

0:09.9

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0:13.4

And with the SumUp point of sale system, you'll always know when you're running low on your best-selling blends.

0:17.9

Visit sumup.co.uk to learn more.

0:24.0

I'm John Batch for spending time with Michael Toth, being reminded of Obamacare.

0:28.9

I've got five wars going on, Michael, and now we have to go back to the summer of 2012.

0:33.2

Is it insurance? Is it not insurance? What a... That was then. This is now.

0:39.9

Congress is asked to extend the subsidies for Obamacare out of the adjustments that were made during the COVID pandemic when the

0:47.1

whole country was locked down, and it wasn't clear where we were going. To extend those subsidies

0:52.2

means more money, nothing internal. But you also introduced me

0:56.0

to a limitation, strange, single owner business. The owner can't also be the employee, and it would be

1:06.4

an easy adjustment to make that happen so the owner could buy health care for himself at a level.

1:13.1

Why won't they let that happen?

1:15.2

Yeah, no, I mean, it's a great point.

1:16.7

I think it's part of a sort of a larger conversation, John, which is, you know, as we talked

1:20.4

about on the first part of the segment, you know, the Obamacare did not work as initially

1:26.2

planned, right? Right. I mean, the Obama administration, this is in the piece, they had a target of they need 40% of the enrollees of Obamacare to be young and they didn't break 30. Okay. And as a result of that, you have a more expensive insurance pool. And so you need, from the government's perspective, from the pro-abomacare

1:46.5

perspective, you then need to fix it by putting more money into the system, which is what we did

1:50.6

during the Biden administration, right? And so, you know, we haven't fixed any of the underlying

...

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